Female Consumption

What is female consumption? I've been milling the question over, sort of inspired by a book an anthro-student-friend recommended sort of inspired by a rampant shopping spree.

Fuck mother fuck those god-damn designer-sale websites.

I swear, Gilt.com, Hautelook.com, Ideeli.com, it's like they restage black friday daily on the internet. Replacing 80% off walmart-brand electronics with 80% off bridge-wear. Replacing middle-america housewives with the average young and bored manhattan working woman on their lunch-breaks. Seriously, it's quite easy to blow $1,200 when you have only 10 minutes to decide if you want to buy a $2000 dress for $350, and you only have 10 minutes or Debby the PR lady in San Fran will snag the only size 8 left.

I'm expecting two boxes to arrive tomorrow morning. A pink silk one-shoulder dress and a grey-blue, embroidered tunic.

I'm excited.

I'm excited to try them on.

I'm excited about trying them on and looking at myself in a mirror. I'm excited to be taken out to dinner while wearing them and feel a man's eyes wash over my body.

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What am I buying when I buy these dresses? I'm buying an image of myself, I guess. It's not about the object. It's about the physical transformation of myself through an object.

Women buy make up. And hair products. Beauty services. Jewlery. Clothing.

They buy drinks at upscale bars. They buy dinners. Essentially, they purchase an image, they veil themselves in it, and they purchase the opportunity to be seen as that image.

This extends to divorced, celibate women without sex drives, to married women with children as well...

So - they aren't doing this so much to attract attention. To attract a specific goal. Rather, they are paying to partake in a visual fantasy.

Funnily enough, men will pay for that very same fantasy. Just spoke with an 1500, 3 hour minimum escort. When I asked her what distinguishes someone at her level from a lower level, she laughed: "conversation skills. Being well-kept. And clothing. I mean, if someone is paying that much, you can't show up in something from Banana Republic or Gap. Or with chipped nails. They're expecting pucci, or dior."

"Really?"

"Yes. They actually, believe it or not, some guys will actually ask what you're wearing. They're quite knowledgable." [No wonder I make 300 euros/hour]

If women spend surplus money on embodying a specific fantasy; and they enjoy that fantasy through the eyes of another: even if that enjoyment comes through looking in a mirror, in a window pane, through imagining onesself as the magazine clipping she is trying to emulate, can anything but escort work fully complete that fantasy?

Can anything other than escort work fill the void of the fantasy, imaginary observer with an equally distant and unattached observer?

I think that escort work can be erotic for the escort - if only auto-erotic.

Auto-erotic in that the financial nature of the transaction, and the one-sided nature of it, makes the experience entirely centered around the female body, it's up-keep, and it's adornment; and ultimately, it can be the perfect and most honest way for a woman to consumate that fantasy, by mentally, at least, enjoying her own body alongside her client.